An alternative could be that even if the gaps are large, strength does not mean that much. Kind of like height - there are reasons why it might indicate superiority in a fight, and is readily measurable, but the reason why men might generally be able to win a fight against a woman are not really about their being taller.



There are also scenes like Nynaeve's shield bouncing off a drunk Elayne, who is supposed to be much weaker than she. Elayne is stronger than any pre-LoC sister, but more or less in the category of those elites of 20 years ago (some of whom died as Tamra's searchers), whereas Nynaeve is up in the AoL elite class. There should be orders of magnitude differences between them (not least because Nynaeve has been channeling much longer should be further along her development) or at least two levels on the mythical 21-level chart, since there are a few channelers in the late series between them in strength. Yet Nynaeve can't shield an already-channeling Elayne, who wasn't even consciously fighting her. Plainly shielding is a crap measurement, much like wrestling can, but does not necessarily, indicate differences of physical strength.